Tag Archives: Campéador

In the easter 1946 edition of KZV aka Kleine Zondagsvriend, Bob De Moor illustrated a story called “De duivel uit den hollen boomstronk” (The devil from the hollow tree stump) in the ‘Professor Goudzoeker vertelt’ series. The illustration – a splendid one – was one of many Bob De Moor would make for KZV for all kind of standalone stories for which he only took care of the illustrations and not of the text itself.

We have been diving into our own archives to showcase you some of these illustrations. Today is the first one. It’s also the first time since 1946 that the illustration which we show you today sees the light of day again, and the very first time it’s being published on the internet too.

The story itself is written in Dutch (albeit in a post-WW2 version with a slightly different spelling and a somewhat obsolete way of writing). The plot is the following: a soldier is asked to buy 2 horses in Turnhout (that’s near Antwerp). During his journey to Turnhout he gets robbed by an old man. After desperately trying to find the robber for hours and hours, he falls asleep inside a hollow tree stump, which gets axed by a band of bandits including the old robber. When the bandits fall out with each other, one of them calls for the devil. The soldier jumps out of the tree stump which is already set on fire after which he collects the money plus lots more which the bandits had stashed away.

The illustration Bob De Moor made (and signed as ‘Bob’) shows this last scene. You can clearly see that the way of drawing instantly reminds of the style used by Walt Disney (which you can also find back in the album “Le Mystère du vieux chateau fort” released in 1947 via Campéador). Several elements also can be traced back to Bob De Moor: the shoes, the way the floor is drawn, both elements which we find back in the series Hobbel & Sobbel and Bart De Scheepsjongen which De Moor was drawing during that same period. The vivid colouring is pretty astonishing and was one of the key ingredients of KZV back in those days.

The original drawing probably went lost as is the case with many of the drawings De Moor made during that time.

Out now is the 100th album in the Fenix Collection by Brabant Strip, namely Bob De Moor‘s “Le Mystère du vieux chateau fort” albeit in a Dutch version with the title “Het Mysterie van de Oude Burcht”. The album is released as a hard cover, full color, in Dutch and they have succeeded in keeping the original colors of the book quite intact. We compared both versions and it’s safe to say that they did a brilliant job. Also the special lettering from the original French edition on Campéador (1947) has been included and gives it that specific touch.

The cover of the Dutch version to be released by Brabant Strip.

The book is limited to 1000 copies and available from your local comicstore in Flanders and Holland. But be fast, this will become a collection item in record time! We had a short chat with Jean Smits, vice-president of Brabant Strip to talk about this first Dutch version of this Bob De Moor classic from 1947.

How come that this album got chosen to be the 100th one?

Jean Smits: For the 100th album in our Fenix Collection we asked the members of the working group for something special in terms of both content and form, and preferably something of a Flemish “master”. Marc de Lint soon suggested we’d go for a Dutch facsimile edition of “Le mystere du vieux château fort”. Everyone agreed that it was a great idea.

For the reissue you have used the original first edition but not the original plates? It’s amazing though how the colors kept the same vividness as in the original first edition.

Jean Smits: The original plates entered the market a few years ago and are now scattered among collectors. We have been able to locate a number of plates and even the films of the whole book. But ultimately, we decided to start from a topnotch copy of the original book. Mike van der Veer scanned everything, cleaned it up, emptied the text balloons and lettered them in Dutch. Mike also worked on the design and layout of the book plus the cover. Afterwards the printing company Cultura in Wetteren did a highly professional color correction to get the colors as close as possible to the original colors of the book. We are very grateful for the involvement of Jan De Meester from Cultura in this project. He helped us a lot and was closely involved in all the steps of the production process.

The translation did not happen from the original Dutch written script which we found in the archives of Ludo Van Looveren. Why?

Jean Smits: We actually were not aware of the existence of this original Dutch written script. Marc de Lint translated everything and Mike van der Veer has proofread it before he added the texts in the text balloons. After that everything was reviewed thoroughly and the text was adapted in the same way as the text balloons in the original book. A PDF was then created and again proofread by several people after which a few corrections were made.

I have heard that you plan to release more older Bob De Moor material. What is exactly scheduled?

Jean Smits: Indeed, there is still a lot of old De Moor material that awaits a rediscovery but it is still too early to let you know what we plan!